


An Echo Of Your Laughter

by Lire_Casander



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George is trying to keep on living without half his soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Echo Of Your Laughter

_What would you think of me now,_  
 _so lucky, so strong, so proud?_  
 _I never said thank you for that,_  
 _now I'll never have a chance._

There are no windows in this place. There are no mirrors, no reflections. I don't need them to remind me of whom I resemble. I don't need them to scream to me now that you're gone. I have enough pain with the whispers in my head , with your voice talking to me. I don't need a light to illuminate this darkness; I have your light to guide me.

I wasn't there. I will never forgive myself for that. I should have been there with you, fighting shoulder to shoulder, hexing Death Eaters and realizing that Percy was joking. I missed that moment, and all I am left with is the memory of the ghost of a smile dancing upon your lips. I clearly remember caressing your face, hoping against hope that you were only sleeping – just playing with my feelings by faking slumber, but time has proven to me that I was mistaken.

You are not here, and I am all alone. After all these years, I feel completely and utterly alone, and now that's something I cannot get used to.

Nights followed by days followed by weeks and months and years. My life has been reduced to a sequence of moments without you . Mom worries about me, and there is no way I can convince her that my self-induced voluntary confinement is the only path I can follow to heal. I feel like walking on thin ice every day of my secluded existence, like at any step the ice will break and I will be eaten by a wet, cold darkness. Maybe that is what I want.

Maybe that is what I need.

There was a time when we were one. You and me, we could rule the world – we were mighty and young, we were the champions to our siblings and not just another headache to our parents. We brought a smile upon their faces, making the clouds hovering over their heads sweep away. Those days are long since gone, and now there is a permanent grey sky over me. I can feel the cold crawling upon me.

Today I've visited the shop for the first time in years. I've brushed my knuckles over the moth-eaten shelves and counters, and I have felt something I haven't felt in what seem like ages.

I have felt your strength and your life coursing through the room., I have seen your smile playing behind a box, your hands busy over a newly-acquired gadget.

I have felt you.

It has been like meeting you once again, as if you haven't been dead for ten years now, as if you have been hiding in your own place, waiting for me to find you and take you out. Every corner of our shop screamed your name, and I was listening.

For the first time in ten years, I have listened.

I know I am not strong – that was your trait. I know I am not wise – yours was the intelligence. I know I am not lucky – I lost the ability to build my own future when I lost you. But I feel stronger, I feel wiser. You live in me, as I lived in you, and when you passed away you still remained in me.

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to figure out that it was you pushing me from the inside. I'm sorry I never thanked you for teaching me everything you knew, for learning everything I knew, for discovering this world with me. I'm sorry I never actually told you I loved you.

I'm making it up for you. I'm opening the shop again, and I'm doing it not only for you but also for me. For we are one, and the voices in my head are receding and now I don't hear anything but an echo of your laughter whenever I think something funny.

I will see you in the afterlife but in the meantime, I am thankful to have you with me while walking this world.


End file.
